It turned out, as Grant had guessed, that the police who had arrived on the scene moments after Ethan had scarpered were called by one of the neighbours, who’d reported a domestic disturbance. The two PCs, who Grant felt were somewhat out of their depth, had initially treated Grant with outright contempt, believing him to be the culprit of the disturbance, and of the clear bruising to Mary’s face. The officers had split Grant and Mary up while one of them chatted quite forcibly to Mary, trying to persuade her to come clean about her husband and press charges against him. The officer with Grant had toed a similar hard line, and seemed reluctant to believe his account of events, given the absence of the mysterious Ethan who had escaped from the scene in such timely fashion. The police had been called to the house more than once recently because of disturbances caused by Ethan, not to mention the other misdemeanours they had on record for him, from drunken assault to possession of drugs to speeding, but none of this seemed to influence their view of Grant as the likely guilty party. It was true that this was the first time that Ethan had been violent to his mother, which as far as Grant was concerned was a new low.

Only after some time, and when the officers had conferred, did they finally come to accept that they’d misread the situation. Both were then apologetic, but still determined to make an arrest, and it had taken a lot of persuasion by Grant and Mary to get the officers to agree to not take the matter any further. Neither Grant nor Mary wanted Ethan arrested and banged up, however increasingly despicable his behaviour was. Plus, Grant knew he himself wasn’t wholly blameless for the fracas, given he had lunged at his son. Ethan wouldn’t get another chance though – not from the police, and not from Grant and Mary.

Once the police had, somewhat reluctantly, headed on their way, Grant and Mary had sat in the lounge for hours, sometimes in silence, sometimes talking about the good times, Annie – their teenage daughter – and her plans for the future. They talked a bit about when Ethan was younger and a seemingly normal boy. Unsurprisingly, they’d dwelled on the bad too, discussing what had gone wrong and what they could do to change the nineteen-year-old man Ethan had become.

At his relatively young age could they still change him?

The answer was that they had to try.